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Family compound with two houses and guest house around Japanese garden. Passive solar. Cedar and fir.
Family compound with two houses and guest house around Japanese garden. Passive solar. Cedar and fir.
Organic Architecture is based upon a fundamental respect for site-specific form, function and material resulting in a design solution in perfect harmony with the environment. This architecture is deeply embedded in the particular: client, designer, time, site and region. It eschews mimicry of overwrought, conventional styles, shock value, pastiche elements, and superfluous ornamentation. The result is a powerful, graceful solution to the complex equation of the principles of nature and the distinctive character of the client, a unique structure carefully designed for living, growing, thriving.

Alex Riley Associates
is dedicated to creating a living space as a coherent whole, an intimate marriage of context and structure, function and form. Our design is predicated by a few basic principles. We ensure that each structure occupies the site in relation to the fundamental priorities of graceful living: appropriate scale, abundant light, maximized sensitivity to the patterns of the seasons, physical security and spiritual well-being. The result–a combination of the unique artistic vision and experience of the designer, in consultation with the client–is superb.

Site selection can be a daunting prospect. Alex Riley Associates will gladly provide consultation to you and your realtor prior to purchase, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the site, identifying possible problems to be solved, and offering creative solutions. After site selection, we see to acquiring soils reports, information on ordinances and permits, and the vast array of preliminaries to building a home.

Addition/remodels are particularly challenging. In many cases, a fundamental flaw in the original structure must be reconfigured: poor light, awkward circulation spaces, inappropriate scale, uncomfortable flow, incorrect positioning in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of the site. Alex Riley Associates has remodeled more than 50 existing homes and commercial structures, successfully making the building “work on the site.” Good design necessitates graceful flow without jarring breaks of continuity and obvious afterthoughts. We carefully assess the site, the existing structure, and the needs of the client. The process typically includes opening up inside spaces to the outside, rearranging internal space so that it relates harmoniously to the external, providing new accesses, reconfiguring living and circulation spaces, solving problems of road noise, blighted views or too-close neighbors. We also provide design expertise in landscape architecture, creatively grading a site to enhance the structure’s natural setting, perceptively placing gardens, arbors, defined walkways and sensitively handling existing flora and trees. We understand an addition/remodel as the transformation of an environment into a cohesive, and beautiful whole, freshly adapted, yet timeless.

Current projects include a 52,000 square foot addition/remodel to the Nelson Memorial Library at Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley.

Inverness Office P.O.B. 153  94937  707 225 5692
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